Tag Archives: values

When I read software engineer's James Damore's "manifesto", aptly titled Google's Ideological Echo Chamber, I fail to see many things. I'm sincerely flabbergasted, given my worldview, at not being able to find a single instance of "sexism", "biological determinism", "misogyny" or any other colorful expletive used by progressive radical egalitarians as a smear word. That's how different conceptual schemes can be once we exclude those who are being intellectually dishonest and have either not read the document or are deliberately misrepresenting it.

What I do see are the reasoned, balanced words of an intelligent young man who desires to simultaneously achieve both goals of truth and social justice at his workplace, with the best interests of his company in mind. I see a truly morally courageous individual who stood off against injustice as he saw it against a very different moral community from his own, which apparently happens to be having enormous influence in one of the most powerful companies on the planet. I can almost feel at times that he seemed to be walking on eggshells and wasn't as vocal as he could be.

How is this possible? How come the same document activates so wildly different semantic frames in different people? And who's right? Have I become so blind by my own cognitive biases to the point I'm missing that much bigotry and hatred?

I have a cluster of hypotheses to explain this mess. They are not novel; they are the coalescence of several different theoretical and empirical results. I'll briefly summarize on this post some of the arguments brought forth in my recent paper on political correctness.

First, we must assume that there exists a plurality of mutually inconsistent accounts of practical reason that human beings may enact. There is no "true and only" rationality; there are rationalities that fit different forms of life, infusing them with different aims and standards of success. Even on the same form of life, such as philosophical activity, we find competing and conflicting accounts of rationality [1].

But let us consider what is generally understood prototypically as "rationality", the like we expect to be expressed by bona fide philosophical and scientific cognition; this is a rationality of objectivity, guided by epistemic values such as empirical adequacy, internal consistency, predictive accuracy and explanatory power. With some exceptions such as constructive empiricists (that have some really nice arguments) and postmodern sociologists (that have some really underwhelming arguments), this type of reasoning deals fundamentally with a discourse that is truth-apt and truth stands as the supreme epistemic goal of this kind of rational inquiry.

But this is not the sort of rationality that is responsible for the crucifixion of James Damore. This is not the rationality being enacted by the so-called "social justice warriors."

Which rationality is it then? It all starts with this hypothesis: human beings are suckers for tribes [2],[3]. It's part of who we are. We relish ourselves into organizing (and re-organizing, and merging, and dissolving...) gangs, crews, bands, factions, congregations and the like; these are fractally expressed as families, political affiliations, religions, football teams, nationalities, army units and so on. Belonging to a social group is a fundamental source of well being for humans. No wonder then, given the importance it has on our lives, that a huge part of practical reason will be devoted to this setting.

Here enters the theory of identity-protective cognition [4], a realization of the expressivist account of rationality by philosopher Elizabeth Anderson [5].

The goal of this type of reasoning is not truth. It is securing the integrity of the group one belongs by defending its core beliefs and values with one's cognitive, affective and behavioral resources. This is manifested in many ways. Confirmation bias will rule that which reinforces the group's beliefs and values, and contrarian opinions can be easily interpreted as insults to the group's intellectual tradition. Adherents can become gratuitously aggressive against someone who disagrees with them in order to suppress dissenting thoughts. These are some of the aspects that make echo chambers and ideological uniformity so dangerous.

Progressive radical egalitarians have their own species of identity-protective cognition; here we have a rationality that aims at social justice and whose standards of success are non-epistemic values of political correctness such as inclusiveness, diversity, empathy and political uniformity.

The worldview of progressive radical egalitarians, I claim, has certain core beliefs which must be defended at all costs. I also hold it has an implicit underlying ethical principle which I've named the Generalized Difference Principle (GDP). This principle is inspired by a usage by philosopher of biology Neven Sesardić ([6], p.224) of the famous heuristic devised by political philosopher John Rawls in his monumental defense of liberal democracy [7].

According to the GDP, if you utter the statement that a population fares statistically better than a population with respect to a given mental trait where both and are of the same social genus , where this leverage of in comparison to is partly genetic in origin and finally, where is taken to be the dominant or oppressive group and the marginalized or oppressed group, then your assertion exemplifies a class of immoral acts associated with .

To speak it more plainly: if men are stated to be the oppressors of women, then if you claim, for instance, that men have on average a greater interest to pursue STEM careers than women due to natural inclinations, then you are sexist. In the semantics of progressive radical egalitarian worldview, there exists a strong conflation of facts and values. "Sexism" isn't just outright discrimination; factual statements can be sexist as well (and "racist", "ableist", "homophobic", etc).

Violations of the GDP are taken to be grievous because they necessarily violate one of the core beliefs of PC adherents; a thesis I call anthropological mental egalitarianism, the denial of between-group differences in cognition, affect and behavior that is traceable to genetic factors and socioeconomically significant.

Violations of the GDP are evil. And for that, James Domare needed to be punished by the moral community hegemonic to Google.

James Damore has been "Summered"; he dared to mention the contemporary behavioral genetics and differential psychology behind sex differences in cognition, affect and behavior which is established by existing empirical evidence to be partly genetic in origin (see, for instance, [8], [9], [10], [11])

Progressive radical egalitarians are mental environmentalists. They hold that the between-group variation of socioeconomically valuable psychological traits to be exclusively environmental in origin.

Even if the means and medians of arbitrary psychological traits in men and women were the same (and we have empirical evidence suggesting they are not), this would still not be enough. One of the most important facts about our species is how different the phenotypical distributions for arbitrary traits are among the sexes. For instance, as a group, women display significantly lesser intra-sexual variability for arbitrary mental traits [12]. There are more men in both tails of the cognitive-affective-behavioral spectrum; for example, concerning general intelligence, there are both more cognitively impaired and delayed men as well as more intellectually gifted men. Why is that? My favorite hypothesis is powerful but deeply counter-intuitive; overwhelmingly, your ancestors have been female.

For the contemporary defenders of social justice, sex differences in cognition, affect and behavior need to be a hundred percent environmental in origin due to core beliefs of their worldview. It would not fare well for with the theory of social oppression under which if groups are economically unequal, it is because some privileged group is oppressing another marginalized group. If mental environmentalism is false, however, in the complete absence of discrimination, there could still be economic inequality due to natural talent - inequality would not simply be an artifact of "social construction."

For those who are interested, I refer to Section 4 of my paper where I explain these concepts in detail.

Are we to infer the executioners of James Damore who are deeply offended and angered by his words merely stupid and irrational people? Not at all. They are enacting perfectly the rationality of identity-protective cognition. They have very successfully attempted to preserve the mandatory narrative script of social oppression theory by purging the one who dissented against anthropological mental egalitarianism into unemployment and social ostracism.

We can divide stances on the voluntarism of entities from a class in two varieties; a "strong" variety stating that tokens of are always chosen and a "weak" variety which is sufficed by the modal claim that any token of is in principle choosable. To analyze stances of voluntarism, we need to have at hand a theory of action and freedom.

I characterize axiological voluntarism in analogy to doxastic voluntarism, the thesis that beliefs are under voluntary control. A proponent of doxastic involuntarism could state, for instance, that our beliefs are irresistible - among the cognitive-affective capabilities that are under our personal control, there is none that can be used for belief choice. You can't really choose whether to believe in the existence of God, that the Sun is hot or that the Earth is flat. I believe this to be correct (and I have not chosen to believe this!).

Axiological voluntarism is by analogy the thesis that we can choose our values.

Even without reflecting on what values are, the weak variety of voluntarism rings greater plausibility. That values can be chosen by a moral agent does not imply that all his values have been chosen. We get the suspicion that most values are acquired through a mixture of phylogenetic and ontogenetic inertia without much reflection. Instinct and custom, not autonomous will, are responsible for most of the axiological portfolio of the average moral agent.

In moral ontology, values, virtues, and goods are often conflated. Words such as 'justice' and 'courage' are routinely used to name both values and virtues. Although these terms are prima facie all semantically intertwined, I hold that their specification and differentiation is warranted for the foundations of any normative discipline. I take the following approach; the concept VIRTUE necessarily refers to an agent's psychology. The description of virtues necessarily involves psychological entities such as abilities, traits, skills, dispositions, capabilities or competencies. For instance, virtues can have a relational structure with one of these types of items as relata (Owen Flanagan's position, for instance, is such a theory [1]).

I take goods to be the kind of entities that can be achieved. They are the end result of processes. Goods range from the "tangible", "concrete" or "countable" to the "intangible", "abstract" or "uncountable". Depending on your implicit general ontology, this gives a plurality of types of goods. The good produced by the process of juicing orange is orange juice. 'Orange juice' is a mass term designating an orange substance that exists in the Umwelt of Homo sapiens. An important good produced by the valorous behavior of members from a military unit is honor [2]. 'Honor' in this sense designates a type of non-observable and uncountable state or property of men in particular historically situated social hierarchies.

If values are neither things that can be achieved, produced or obtained and are not prototypical psychological entities, what are they? Conceptions of VALUE abound. I'll mention some.

The folk conception appears to have a Platonistic bent; at the level of surface grammar, values and ideals are usually referenced as abstract particulars , such as "The True" or "The Socially Just".

Mario Bunge ([3], Chapter 1) analyzes values with n-adic evaluative predicates which include as relata at least one evaluator and one object of its evaluation. To abstract away particulars such as "The Beautiful" and "The Nutritious" is just a strategy to compress information about a property with a complex relational structure. The simplest case would be the relation where values but one could add as many indexed terms as one likes. Bunge's ontology of objects is pluralistic in that things, states, events, and processes are all kinds of object. In Bunge's conception, depending on how you characterize the evaluative predicates, some values are not chosen. For instance, ceteris paribus, it is an objective fact of the matter that chicken liver is nutritiously valuable to an arbitrary human being.

Paul Katsafanas ([4], Chapter 5) brings forth a complex relational view of values in his exegesis of Nietzschean metaethics; a moral agent values if and only if has an affective orientation of positive valence induced by a drive toward and does not disapprove of this affective orientation. To truly grasp this definition, is it mandatory to understand the sophisticated Nietzschean philosophical psychology of drives. This conception is axiologically voluntaristic due to the inclusion of the desiderata of personal approval - assuming that this attitude is under personal control.

For me, the most interesting characterization of value comes not from philosophy but from clinical psychology, in the radical behaviorist research program of ACT (Acceptance & Commitment Therapy; [5], Chapter 11, [6], Chapter 11).

ACT is unique in clinical psychology by being vigorously explicit concerning its philosophical upbringings, sporting a philosophy of science, action, value, and mind solidly grounded in the tradition of American Pragmatism.

Under my sketchy (and decisively unorthodox) interpretation of ACT, for an agent a value is a family of possible future life paths or histories , where is a time interval spanning from the present moment to the time of the agent's death. Over the course of these directions, we find the ongoing realization of a particular type of activity . For instance, the value "Adventure" is constituted by the life directions where the agent would enact goals related to physical risk, the perception of danger, exploration of novel environments and excitement. Values are neither the goals nor the outcomes of completed goals - they are the journey.

In ACT, values inform the selection of decision variants in decision-making contexts and are freely chosen.

So, why should we care if we can choose our values? Since the practical reasons should be obvious, here are some academic reasons: axiological voluntarism is something that is mandated by many philosophical theories. For instance, the Nietzschean process of "transvaluation of all values" and the cornerstone of political liberalism under which an agent should be able to rule his life and pursue happiness as he sees fit all presuppose axiological voluntarism.

Violent imagery from fantasy fiction included in order to turn this barren subject into something more compelling

The World Knot and its Place in Philosophy

The World Knot. A cursory Google search reveals that this imposing phrase was designed and marshaled by Arthur Schopenhauer to refer to the mind-body problem. Except that it wasn't. It's another minor contemporary philosophical myth, one of those false etymological origin stories we unconsciously reproduce again and again by inertia as if they were acknowledged truth. Notwithstanding, as my witty and sharp-minded professor Mário Guerreiro used to paraphrase, se non è vero, è ben trovato (from Italian; something like "even if it is not true, it is a good story"). The phrase 'World Knot' does a fairly good job at suggesting imagery of the muddled state of affairs that is the relationship between the mental and the non-mental.

The World Knot needs to be unsnarled if we are to make progress in many perennial questions. In this mysterious juncture we strive to find explananda, relata and other significative connections required to bring light to central problems in philosophy.

This World Knot is something we are constantly revisiting. And this is absolutely true concerning moral agents such as ourselves conducting foundational work on ethics. This is where Metaethics meets Philosophy of Mind.

In my previous entry on the subject, I've made a number of bold claims. I will reiterate a couple of them:

Contemporary analytic metaethics is ontologically committed to two types of existents - subjective and objective existents

Subjective existents are in some sense metaphysically "inferior", they exist only in virtue of there being prior objective existents

Subjective existents do a poor job at grounding normativity. If any ethical subjectivism is true, this is supposed to be very bad news

But what in the Seven Hells objectivity and subjectivity really are? What do they consist in, how do they differ?

I will not present an exhaustive exposition of this severely tangled issue. I will, however, expose a number of auxiliary these of varying degrees of conceptual depth which, conjointly, I'll use in the attempt to grasp this distinction more clearly.

Representation, Mind and Ontological Dependence

Empiricist metaethicist Jesse Prinz has, in my view, presented the most painstakingly clear and detailed discussion [1] of the meaning of 'objectivity' in the field of metaethics and how it relates to minds in the Chapter 4 of his The Emotional Construction of Morals.

At the risk of being unfair and too coarse-grained, I'll single out and discuss the two relevant ontic senses of 'objectivity' mentioned by Prinz; objectivity as mind-independence and objectivity as unrepresentedness, i.e., the property of not being represented.

Tradition from Franz Brentano tells us that the 'mental' is the intentional. The intentional is the representational, that which is about something. But is the converse true, i.e., is the intentional the mental as well, is this a case of co-extension? That doesn't seem plausible at all. As an example, if any realist theory of computational implementation holds true (as I also claim), the domain of the 'intentional' is going to be very wide. It can get much worse; if certain varieties of pancomputationalism were to be true (I hold that this is extremely unlikely but this has been seriously considered by top-notch researchers such as the late theoretical physicist John Wheeler and the theoretical computer scientist Gregory Chaitin) then the entirety of empirical reality would consist of representation and that would mean automatic panpsychism.

Given this cautionary tale, let's ditch objectivity as the "unrepresented" and venture further on what it means for something to be "mind-independent".

'Mind-dependence' (and independence) is an asymmetrical relation of ontological dependence. But what counts as a mind and what does it mean to say that something is ontologically dependent to a mind?

Letting go the Brentanian saying, attempts to individuate the "mental" are still very hard. Are image schemata 'mental' enough? What about implicit memory? Or, for Seven Heaven's sake, the control system for blood glucose? Also, perhaps it is the case that not the entire scope of mentality is apt for metaethics so we may only need to be concerned with a narrow portion of "the mental".

Let's tentatively single out only psychological states that may have at least a proxy influence by the role they may play in moral judgement. That sounds fair enough. Resorting to intentional systems theory [2], a fauna comprised by beliefs, desires, intentions, urges, feelings and similar patterns specified by folk psychology emerges and seem apt enough. Enough for what counts as a mental state and a mind; a mind, an intentional system, a real pattern tractable exclusively through the adoption of the intentional stance. We will deem whatever entity whose epistemic access requires the intentional stance a "mental" thing.

So, we now have our catalogue of mental things. How do subjective things relate to mental things? What is the relation involved?

There are many possibilities. Prinz goes for a weaker kind of ontological dependence, supervenience over human psychology. One can also lean forward something stronger, like Michael Huemer [3] and go for an ontological relation of constitution. In this sense, moral posits (moral actions, facts, etc) in some way include intentional states, then they are subjective.

I think the situation is not clear enough for us to devise a more fine-grained depiction of which is the relevant sense of ontological dependence so we'll have to go along with a sketchy coalition comprised by both our reflected and unexamined intuitions and traditions and steadily revise the details as we march forward.

I'm interested at how this sketchy exposition matches some existing conceptions of the objectivity-subjectivity distinction. To start this series, I'll resort to a famous framework devised by philosopher John Searle.

Brute and Institutional Facts

This section is comprised by my personal exegesis of Searle's opus The Construction Of Social Reality [4]. I shall not go into exhaustive depth but hopefully I've gotten all the relevant details right.

The kind of existents (posits) Searle is mostly interested in are facts. Facts for Searle are understood in a very customary way; facts are the truthmakers of true statements.

Brute facts are a type of objective existent and institutional facts are a type of subjective existent. Brute facts are facts that do not depend on human institutions for their existence and institutional facts are those that do.

Lets get more specific on what this means.

Searle's taxonomy is actually much more intricate and multi-layered. At the base level, there are mental and non-mental (what he dubiously calls "brute physical") facts. The priority of brute facts over institutional facts is not only ontological but logical.

Searle is famous for rejecting the Bentramian maxim as a criteria of individuation for "the mental". But since the mental phenomena he deploys for the grounding of institutional facts are generally beliefs and certain kinds of utterances this won't be a problem for our discussion for they fit our established repertoire of what counts as a mental entity.

From the primacy of the ontological ladder upward, institutional facts are first mental and then intentional, collective, functional, agentive and status-conferring.

Institutional facts are "collective" in their dependence of collective intentionality, that is, a special kind of co-occurrence of the intentional states of at least two intentional agents generally coordinated by particular speech acts. They require agreements or endorsements, be they tacit or straightforward, between at least two intentional agents. In Searle's terminology, the collective is also the social.

Institutional facts are also "functional" in that they involve the collective assignment of a function to a certain entity.

And they are "agentive" because the functions attributed are intended, that is, they require a willful deliberation by intentional agents. Agentive functions are therefore contrasted with what many philosophers call "natural" functions - such as the the job carried out by the blood glucose control system which, if working properly, will chemically "warn" the central nervous system once blood glucose levels are about to compromise the organism's homeostasis. In this, Searle draws a crisp line between the "natural" and the "artificial" or "man-made". I find this contention to be extremely problematic but shall not utter here my reasons of why I believe this is false.

The last property that defines institutional facts, that of being "status-conferring", requires a bit more explanation. Head with me with the following example:

It is a fact that Ice, the Valyrian steel greatsword of Lord Eddard Stark, has the function to behead deserters from the Night's Watch (or any other human being, for the matter).

For Searle, it is clear that this fact is an agentive fact for Ice is an artifact, a sword that was forged, that was deliberately created by blacksmiths in Ancient Valyria. But this fact is not a brute fact - although it is related to brute facts in special ways.

The function that confers the ability to decapitate is contingent upon a relation between the properties of the blade (such as the microscopic molecular regularity of the edge) with the properties of the necks of human renegades from Castle Black (such as the hardness of the spinous process of human skeletons). In that, Searle claims that the assignment of this function is ultimately due to brute facts, which in his framework is another way of saying the that the function itself is extrinsic to any mental state.

Contrast this with the related fact that Ice, a heirloom of House Stark, is a cerimonial tool employed by the Warden Of The North in particular classes of capital punishment. This attribution for Searle is a status-conferring function for there is, allegedly, no intrinsic connection between this particular object and the particular capital punishment rites of the North. For what we know, the traditions could have been very different and other weapons (or no weapon at all) could have been fixed by agreement and used for that judicial purpose. To sum it, status-conferring functions are said to be arbitrary in a way causal-conferring functions are not.

Searle explicitly acknowledges that the relation of ontological dependence involved is one of constitution.

Institutional facts, being a subclass of intentional facts, are constituted by intentional states. And being collective, i.e., social facts, they are constituted by agreements among rational beings.

A common way by which institutional facts may come into being is through utterances such as declarations.

Let's try some more examples to see how this works. According to this framework, it is a brute fact that the atomic number of the main element of the alloy out of which Vallyrian steel is made of is 26. This means that, if it were the case that all Westerosi, Essossi, Giants, the Others or any other sentient being of the Known World in the A Song Of Ice And Fire saga had vanished, the atomic number of the main element of the alloy out of which Vallyrian steel of would still be 26. Or so the story goes (the story of John Searle, not necessarily of George R. R. Martin's).

Brute facts are therefore facts that can be obtained irrespective of the existence of any intentional systems - minds.

It is, however, an institutional fact that Maiden's Day is a holiday in the calendar of the Faith of the Seven. If it were the case that all those that implicitly or explicitly uphold this tradition had vanished - be them hardcore followers of the Seven or simply mere observers of this chronological custom - then it would not be true that Maiden's Day is a holiday in the calendar of the Faith of the Seven. For the truthmaker of the sentence 'Maiden's Day is a holiday in the calendar of the Faith of the Seven' is itself constituted by the recognition and endorsement of Maiden's Day. And that's what makes it subjectively real.

If all traces of the agreements that make the fact of Maiden's Day obtainable had vanished from all minds, Maiden's Day would cease to exist. If future Westerosi archaeologists, historians or cultural anthropologists were to discover an inscription documenting this custom, Maiden's Day could have its metaphysical status reverted back from non-existence into existence. Or so the framework predicts.

Claims on entities with the standing of Searlean brute facts would be denied by many gangs of philosophers that are willful enemies of objectivity stronger ontic senses; American Pragmatists, Post Modernists and Social Constructionists for example could claim that this alleged "brute fact" that Iron has an atomic number of 26 is not really non-institutional - for surely the mathematical and chemical framework that allows us to make such statement has a traceable recorded origin in the history of science, from the Western adoption of hindu-arabic numeral systems we use to represent natural numbers to the Mendeleevian grid that replaced previously endorsed taxonomies of the elements.

Surprisingly, I staunchly side with Searle when it comes to these kinds of arguments. I hold that they are a product of a confusion between the representational systems which are employed to stand in or represent the information expressed by a given entity or system in the world with the information itself. Searle is absolutely right on this; we cannot mistake the institutions and conventions (such as the english language, the hindu-arabic numeral system, the edifice of atomic theory, etc) required to state a given fact with the fact itself. The fact that we call iron 'iron' and we use '26' to represent the quantity 26 is irrelevant.

Final Transitory Observations

I have attempted to be as charitable as possible in my expositions. Now I shall finish this entry not with clamorous resolution but, again, with enigmatic conundrum; I personally believe very little of what has been stated.

More centrally, the seemingly common-sensical Searlean framework is explicitly guilty at a viewpoint I hold to be seriously mistaken; that we may devise an empirically responsible theory of ontology under which different existing entities receive "higher" or "lower" ontological statuses. I hold that it is false to assert that reality comes in degrees or hierarchical ranks.

Why should we care? Well, tradition says that, if we are to care about anything, we should care about our moral values. Moral values are said to be inescapable, to unavoidably bind our predicament, to frame our human condition as deeply as anything could. Infuse this sermon with as many dramatic additions as you'd like. The main problem is that there exists a very strong case in moral philosophy which states that in order for all of this to work, our values need to be grounded in a foundation of extraordinary character, something at least as metaphysically safe and fancy as Searle's arid and impersonal "brute facts" but most probably something even more demanding. But, at glance, it seems wildly absurd to suggest that human morality can receive any such treatment.

Many of these turmoils are a consequence of our conceptions of the ontic senses of objectivity and subjectivity and, again, on the classical subject/object distinction itself.

Something has to be made concerning this deep-seated contention that objective entities are in some relevant sense extramental entities. Stay tuned.

@book{Prinz2007a,
abstract = {Jesse Prinz argues that recent work in philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology supports two radical hypotheses about the nature of morality: moral values are based on emotional responses, and these emotional responses are inculcated by culture, not hard-wired through natural selection. In the first half of the book, Jesse Prinz defends the hypothesis that morality has an emotional foundation. Evidence from brain imaging, social psychology, and psychopathology suggest that, when we judge something to be right or wrong, we are merely expressing our emotions. Prinz argues that these emotions do not track objective features of reality; rather, the rightness and wrongness of an act consists in the fact that people are disposed to have certain emotions towards it. In the second half of the book, he turns to a defense of moral relativism. Moral facts depend on emotional responses, and emotional responses vary from culture to culture. Prinz surveys the anthropological record to establish moral variation, and he draws on cultural history to show how attitudes toward practices such as cannibalism and marriage change over time. He also criticizes evidence from animal behavior and child development that has been taken to support the claim that moral attitudes are hard-wired by natural selection. Prinz concludes that there is no single true morality, but he also argues that some moral values are better than others; moral progress is possible. Throughout the book, Prinz relates his views to contemporary and historical work in philosophical ethics. His views echo themes in the writings of David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche, but Prinz supports, extends, and revises these classic theories using the resources of cutting-edge cognitive science. The Emotional Construction of Morals will stimulate and challenge anyone who is curious about the nature and origin of moral values},
author = {Prinz, Jesse J.},
citeulike-article-id = {13591439},
posted-at = {2015-04-24 19:10:16},
priority = {2},
publisher = {Oxford University Press},
title = {The Emotional Construction of Morals},
year = {2007}
}

Contemporary metaethics is a very technical zoo of categories and terminology that is used inconsistently from author to author. Here I'll digress on some aspects of the use of the interrelated terms 'existence', 'reality' and 'objectivity' for some posterior discussions I intend to make.

Nihilism and Existence

'Nihilism' names a family of loosely-related theses from XIX century european moral philosophy. Still, as it is commonly used in contemporary anglophone philosophy, the term 'nihilism' carries much less conceptual baggage. I shall address this "thicker" sense of 'nihilism' in the future but here I'll be solely preoccupied with the "thinner" sense.

Nihilism simpliciter is an ontological stance forming a schema that demands a class of variables out of a given domain of discourse. It is the denial of the objective existence of a certain class of entities from a certain domain of discourse. A nihilist on is someone that stands by the claim that does not objectively exist.

For instance, in analytic metaphysics, a mereological nihilist is someone that contends that there are no aggregates of proper parts in a particular sense - only proper parts have objective existence.

A causation nihilist would be someone that claims that causes and effects lack objective grounding. We can imagine in political philosophy a defender of individual nihilism, one that claims that objectively-existing individual agents have no place in political theory and that we presumably may only populate our political ontology with groups or classes of political agents.

In this very philosophical tradition, a rough rule of thumb would be that outside of axiological fields, 'nihilism' is a descriptor term can be used interchangeably with 'eliminativism' and 'anti-realism'. But definitely not so in metaethics; as I'll claim, contemporary metaethical discussion is committed to not just the existence of two kinds of things but to two kinds of existents, two ways under which universals and particulars can be real. Confusingly enough, a moral nihilist is not necessarily a moral anti-realist - hopefully I'll be able to eradicate this terminological confusion.

Existence and the Objective-Subjective Distinction

The previous use of 'objectivity' here demands extensive clarification. This term comprises a mess of cluster concepts that conflate epistemological and ontological claims but I'll accept the burden of presenting an informative exposition while at the same time attempting being charitable to this complicated field.

Let's talk a bit about existence itself, what may strike us as the most fundamental notion in metaphysics. What seems to be the default thesis in Western philosophy concerning the formal nature of existence is that existence is of a different logical type than a property (and presumably, this is also reflected ontologically). This was famously championed, for instance, by Immanuel Kant in his critique of the ontological arguments for the existence of God. Standing by of our contemporary conceptual apparatuses, we could say that our sense of 'existence' in natural language is exhaustively picked up by the concept of existential quantification in mathematical logic. I.e., it would be a mistake to represent existence by a predicate.

If we are to say that an aurochs exist, this is formally captured by the sentence:

I'll stand by something bold; I think current metaethical discussion is implicitly committed to the alternative, more controversial view of existence as a property. I am very sympathetic towards this viewpoint of existence but I'll not utter my reasons for that here.

Metaethics constantly divides reality in two different kinds of stuff; there is an objective and a subjective realm. It is my impression that the in this field, the most natural way to understand the nihilist schema I've exposed is considering 'objectivity' to be a certain higher-order property of an entity.

If an aurochs exists, an aurochs instantiates the property 'existence', as in the sentence:

Formally, 'existence' itself is represented as a predicate that ranges over a given variable and 'objectivity' and 'subjectivity' are higher-order predicates that range over the predicate 'existence'.

In this view, there are two different modes under which something that is real may be realized. For the sake of clarity in this already complicated discussion, let us use 'reality' or 'realness' to name this property and use 'existence' in a more abstract sense that is supposed to be captured by the use of existential quantification in predicate logic.

Objective reality (or existence, if you will) is a type of reality that is contrasted with subjective reality. To put it simply, it is the thesis that are two distinct ways in which some thing can be real, either objectively or subjectively.

'Objectivity' and 'subjectivity' are n-order predicates for the (n-1)-order predicate 'reality', that I am representing by the predicate ''.

It looks like this; take 'objectivity' to be a property represented by the 2nd-order predicate ''. To say that aurochs are an objective item of reality in second order logic is to write:

In a Fregean view of existence, for instance, that would make 'objectivity' and 'subjectivity' third-order predicates - more than enough to certainly make many logicians twist their stomachs, I'm sure. An for good reason; the implicit higher-order model theory to deal with the higher-order structures of higher-order logic can be theoretically are very tricky.

Entities that have objective reality are often assumed to have a more special ontological status in comparison to that which only exists subjectively. Something that is subjectively real is often assumed to do a poor job at existing, as a second-class metaphysical citizen.

A common claim that we see reiterated in various ways is that it is indispensable in ethics for at least certain forms of normativity to have objective grounding. Normative force that does not have objective standing is either not good enough (it is suboptimal) or not good at all (it adds nothing).

The crown of objective reality is endorsed as an ideal and if it is the case that our most cherished values are plebeians incapable of being crowned, there is a line of thought that argues that this would be the worst kind of tragedy, to the point of despair. This is a theme present in both modern and contemporary continental european and contemporary anglophone philosophy which will be the subject of another entry that is still work in progress.

Moral Nihilism, Moral Subjectivism and Moral Anti-Realism

It's time to make things transparently clear for the uses of 'nihilism', 'subjectivism' and 'anti-realism' in moral philosophy and why it is wrong to conflate them.

Let us expand a bit the definition for moral nihilism; a moral nihilist is someone that holds that there are no objectively real moral posits. No objective moral properties such as 'cruelty', no objective moral particulars such as The Form of the Good. According to a traditional framework, if there are no objectively moral properties to be exemplified, there are no objective moral facts and no objective moral truths either.

Take to be the relevant posit or posits of the domain of discourse in question. 'Anti-realism' is the stance with the greatest scope. It claims that it is not the case that have any kind of reality whatsoever.

'Subjectivism' on is therefore inconsistent with 'anti-realism' on for subjectivists on hold that are subjectively real. When the late moral nihilist J.L. Mackie [1] writes:

...no doubt if moral values are not objective they are in some very broad sense subjective...

...he is endorsing the subjective reality of moral values.

Philosopher Jesse Prinz [2] has the same position; he denies objectivity to moral values without being a moral anti-realist.

Inconclusive Thoughts And Some Personal Remarks

I have said very little about the alleged metaphysical difference between that which is objectively real from that which is subjectively real. That is an extensive topic that will be the subject of my next entry.

I must add that I am extremely unsatisfied with this traditional framework, which reeks of bad neo-scholasticism. And the centerpiece is the perennial distinction between subject and object itself. I believe that not only this distinction is deeply misleading and unnecessarily ensnarls important philosophical problems but that it is incompatible with a scientifically responsible view of the world. I have no fully-fledged alternative framework to replace it but I believe many hints on how it could be done have been advanced by contemporary researchers.

A framework with some of the viewpoints expressed here is found for instance in the third version of the Real Pattern Theory of Ontology [3]. There, we have no second-class (or third-class, etc) metaphysical citizens. There are no degrees of reality; either something exists or it doesn't. Finer distinctions relating the 'ontological dependence' of certain Real Patterns towards certain intentional systems are always local in character, relating to etiology, history or pragmatical considerations. A band of ruminating aurochs in the cold plains of The North are just as real as the market value of Valyrian Steel in Westerosi society.

The objective-subjective distinction is not going away in philosophy anytime soon. But I long for a future in an academic setting were the distinction and all the misleading baggage it carries will be seen, as Bertrand Russell once put it, as a 'relic of a bygone age'.

Personal Acknowledgement

I am grateful for my friend and brilliant logician Dante Cardoso Pinto de Almeida for personal discussions I've had in the process of writing this entry.

@book{Mackie1977a,
abstract = {John Mackie's stimulating book is a complete and clear treatise on moral theory. His writings on normative ethics-the moral principles he recommends-offer a fresh approach on a much neglected subject, and the work as a whole is undoubtedly a major contribution to modern {philosophy.The} author deals first with the status of ethics, arguing that there are not objective values, that morality cannot be discovered but must be made. He examines next the content of ethics, seeing morality as a functional device, basically the same at all times but changing significantly in response to changes in the human condition. He sketches a practical moral system, criticizing but also borrowing from both utilitarian and absolutist views. Thirdly, the frontiers of ethics, areas of contact with psychology, metaphysics, theology, law and politcs, are {explored.Throughout}, his aim is to discuss a wide range of questions that are both philosophical and practical, working within a distinctive version of subjectivism-an "error" theory of the apparent objectivity of values. John Mackie has drawn on the contributions of such classic thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Hume, Kant and Sidgwick, and on more recent discussions, to produce a thought-provoking account that will inspire both the general reader and the student of philosophy.},
author = {Mackie, J. L.},
citeulike-article-id = {13591438},
number = {1},
pages = {134--137},
posted-at = {2015-04-24 19:10:16},
priority = {2},
publisher = {Penguin},
title = {Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong},
year = {1977}
}

@book{Prinz2007a,
abstract = {Jesse Prinz argues that recent work in philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology supports two radical hypotheses about the nature of morality: moral values are based on emotional responses, and these emotional responses are inculcated by culture, not hard-wired through natural selection. In the first half of the book, Jesse Prinz defends the hypothesis that morality has an emotional foundation. Evidence from brain imaging, social psychology, and psychopathology suggest that, when we judge something to be right or wrong, we are merely expressing our emotions. Prinz argues that these emotions do not track objective features of reality; rather, the rightness and wrongness of an act consists in the fact that people are disposed to have certain emotions towards it. In the second half of the book, he turns to a defense of moral relativism. Moral facts depend on emotional responses, and emotional responses vary from culture to culture. Prinz surveys the anthropological record to establish moral variation, and he draws on cultural history to show how attitudes toward practices such as cannibalism and marriage change over time. He also criticizes evidence from animal behavior and child development that has been taken to support the claim that moral attitudes are hard-wired by natural selection. Prinz concludes that there is no single true morality, but he also argues that some moral values are better than others; moral progress is possible. Throughout the book, Prinz relates his views to contemporary and historical work in philosophical ethics. His views echo themes in the writings of David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche, but Prinz supports, extends, and revises these classic theories using the resources of cutting-edge cognitive science. The Emotional Construction of Morals will stimulate and challenge anyone who is curious about the nature and origin of moral values},
author = {Prinz, Jesse J.},
citeulike-article-id = {13591439},
posted-at = {2015-04-24 19:10:16},
priority = {2},
publisher = {Oxford University Press},
title = {The Emotional Construction of Morals},
year = {2007}
}